[PD] [PD-dev] tkwidgets

[Jonathan Wilkes]

----- Original Message -----
> From: Martin Peach <martin.peach at sympatico.ca>
> To: Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika at yahoo.com>
> Cc: András Murányi <muranyia at gmail.com>; pd-list <pd-list at iem.at>
> Sent: Friday, August 26, 2011 2:30 PM
> Subject: Re: [PD] [PD-dev] tkwidgets
> 
> On 2011-08-26 11:31, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
>>  It might be a good idea to list the problems with tcl/tk so we can weigh
>>  them against the difficulty of using a different GUI toolkit. The
>>  problems I see are:
>>  * difficult to implement a decent zoom function for a canvas
>>  * can't display png without the Img library (included in 8.6)
>>  * can't do alpha transparency
>> 
>>  Of the three I listed, I'm mostly interested in the first as it means
>>  that (without prior planning) it's hard to take a patch you've been
>>  working on at font size 10 and display it adequately over a projector,
>>  for example. (If there's a work around I'd like to know it.)
>> 
>>  I'd like to hear others, but I'm mostly interested in problems with
>>  tcl/tk >= 8.5 as the GUI.
>> 
> 
> * Because tcl/tk is an interpreted language it is a lot slower than a compiled 
> language: you have a script in ASCII that has to go through a processor that 
> interprets the script to call a lower-level machine that actually does the work, 
> while Qt is compiled so it does what you ask it directly, more or less.

If there are any GUI developers out there, I'd love to see a few comparisons 
between tk canvas and Qt graphics view-- say, moving a large number of 
rectangles with the mouse, or creating/destroying a bunch of polygons, and looking 
at memory/cpu usage.

-Jonathan